


It's All Talk

by findafight



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Developing Relationship, Episode Tag, Gen, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mutual Pining, Self-Worth Issues, a staple of my fics, it's hardly mentioned but y'all know it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 16:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13170816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findafight/pseuds/findafight
Summary: Karolina sends Chase upstairs and Gert helps him, in more ways than one.A middle of the episode fic in which we see what they did while Karolina was downstairs.





	It's All Talk

Chase barely registers climbing the stairs, numb, through the door to his room. Karolina said Gert is here, but she’s not, he doesn’t see her, why is he always alone? Why do they keep missing each other? He looks around, to see if he just missed her, and notices that his houseplant is bare of leaves. Just. None but one, and it certainly had more earlier. 

He plucks the last leaf and rubs it between his fingers for a moment, trying to focus on why it’s the last one, and not the fact his dad is bleeding out in the garage. There’s a noise from the other side of the room, and he jumps, looks up, and the-the _dinosaur_ from Gert’s basement is there, his lacrosse stick is in his hands, and it _roars_ at him. Maybe it wants to eat him.

Then, the dinosaur settles, purrs, with Gert beside it, glasses glinting and hair swishing. Her rings sparkle against the scales she pets as she talks, and he responds. He thinks he tells her to get away from it, to protect her, and she shakes her head, smiles in that way that tells him she knows something he doesn’t, but she wants him to ask so she can tell him. 

It listens to her. He remembers that, remembers how it calmed when she told herself to breathe. He tries to reach out and pet it, but it growls, and he draws back. He thinks he’s shaking. He isn’t sure anymore. Everything feels too slow and too fast, out of focus and in sharp relief, at the same time. He hears and sees but moments later he doesn’t know what he’s just said. 

“Chase.” Gert’s hand is on his arm, lightly touching to get his attention. The dinosaur is behind her, blinking slowly at him. He looks at Gert’s face with her eyebrows drawn together and eyes darting over his face, trying to read him, like she always does. 

“Gert.” His voice quivers, and he hates it. Hates how he’s so shaken, so weak, so scared. He doesn’t want to think about what his face is doing.

Something happens to her face when he speaks, and for a moment she looks _scared._ Which doesn’t make sense, she has a dinosaur that listens to her, he’s pretty sure he couldn’t do anything to her at without getting mauled. But then her eyes soften and-oh, that’s the same look she got when they found out about Molly’s parents and asked where she’d be living now, when Alex fell out of a tree onto his glasses and broke them, when Chase came to school with his arm in a cast and said he broke it skateboarding (he didn’t). She’s not scared _of_ him she’s scared _for_ him. 

She takes a shaky breath, and whispers, “We need to clean you up, Ok? Let’s, um, let’s go to the bathroom, yeah?” and she takes his hand and leads the way to his en suite. Her hands only shake slightly, when she starts, but soon still. They are gentle on his face, his neck, his arms. Dabbing away the blood silently. She asks where he hurts and squats in front of him to put that First Aid training she said she got to good use, face soft, eyes sharp for flinches. Chase tries not to lean into her touch on his cheek, but doesn’t succeed if the blush on Gert’s cheeks is anything to go by.

“It’s my dad. He-” Chase doesn’t know how to say ‘ _he was about to kill me for using the lab after he said I could so my mom shot him, and now the Pride is at our house because he’s dying.’_ without saying _exactly that_ and breaking down. He makes a choked sound, and tears flow anyways.

Gert gasps softly and her hands flutter around him, trying to figure out how to comfort. One settles on the junction between his shoulder and neck, the other twining in his hands. “Oh, Chase.”

He gives a loud sob, before silencing himself and leaning forward to rest his head on her shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist. Her hand brushes up his neck and into his hair, and he can feel her shift to move the other but he squeezes it. She squeezes back. “He’s dying” and it is so quiet, it’s hardly a whisper, more of a breath with form, but Gert hears nonetheless and tightens her grip on his hand.

She stays silent for a moment, stroking his hair in a soothing rhythm, before slowly asking “Tell me what you need from me. I-I don’t know how to do this, Chase.” It says something to the severity of the situation that Gert is admitting not knowing something, anything, and asking for help. Not that she doesn’t ask for help, but not usually for not knowing.

He doesn’t really think about what he says, sitting on the bathroom tiles, sobbing into the shoulder of a girl he used to be friends with while his father is dying downstairs. He doesn’t want to tell her everything. Not yet, not now. So he just says the first thing he thinks, which is “Just talk to me.”

Chase can feel Gert swallow and take a breath. “Ok. Sure. Um, remember when we were kids? And actually, I dunno, friends?” 

“We’re friends now, too.”He can’t help but interrupt. He doesn’t want to go on _not_ being friends with Gert, it’s been too long and he’s crying on her in his bathroom. They’re friends. At least, he thinks of her as his friend. 

Her breathing stutters for a moment, before she huffs, “Sure, Chase. Yeah. So, when we were all kids, and we were learning how to be sarcastic? Mostly from Amy, who was so wise and above us because of her age.” she waits for him to nod in acknowledgement before continuing. “You and I were always the worst. We would work together and add to the other’s sarcasm towards our parents, which was bad because we were like, nine, and had no idea how sarcasm and snark even worked, so eventually it turned into us just saying outlandish things in weird voices at each other, because no one wanted to listen to us.” 

Chase hears the smile in her voice at remembering them being dumb kids together, and feels his chest loosen slightly from the vice he didn’t realize was around it. He hums, and repositions his legs to a more comfortable position.

“I really liked that, Chase. It was nice trying to get the hang of something together, and not caring what people thought about two kids yelling nonsense.”

“Yeah. It was nice. Especially when your dad would try to be serious and tell us not to talk back and you would go ‘That’s our job!’, and hide behind me giggling? What happened to that Gert?” He says it jokingly as he pulls away to look at her, like he doesn’t miss having that easy causal relationship with her that, if he’s being honest, probably ended before Amy died. 

She doesn’t meet his eyes, looking at their still entwined hands. “What happened to that Chase? We both-we grew up.” Gert says it with a rueful smile, like she didn’t want to grow up, to change in the ways she did, to have to deal with the responsibilities of knowing their parents are murderers. 

He doesn’t know why she would be unhappy with herself. She is blunt but kind-hearted, stubborn but believes in just causes, sharp but softens with trust. She has anxiety that he’s seen consumer her so she cannot speak or breath or move, and she is the bravest person he knows because of it. He wishes he had grown up to be like her. She’s right to wonder where old Chase went, hidden by fear and pretending, so sometimes, on bad days when he acts like he never knew the rest of the Pride’s kids, he doesn’t feel like anybody, like who he really was was tied up with those six then five other kids. He doesn’t feel like the boy who would yell ridiculous phrases with a girl he grew up with, like the boy who played hide and seek and always won, like the boy who loved his childhood friends so much he couldn’t imagine not always knowing them inside out like he did back then. He was just Chase Stein, jock, son of Victor Stein. Gert, she could have pages of words to go after her name, but this sometimes fake person Chase has made up for himself to be has one or two, maybe three. He doesn’t understand why she looks at him sometimes like she wants him to look back, when he’s already looking at her, seeing her. He won’t ask her to stop. 

“My dad hates it when I talk back to him. Calls me disrespectful.” He blurts it, unthinking, to break the silence between them. His father does more than call him disrespectful, but he isn’t ready to say all of it yet. This is a start

Gert squeezes his hand, measuring in the hold they have on each other. “You’re a teenager. It’s your job.” the corners of her mouth twitch, probably, at her little joke, and he huffs, but doesn’t reply. He lets the quiet wash over them again. Gert doesn’t say anything more.

The silence stretches between them, and Chase needs to break it, so as not to cry again, or tell her that he wishes they were still those kids harmlessly talking back and giving sass to Dale Yorkes—who seems harmless and kind and loving around his family, genuine in who he is all the time because he likes who he is, until one remembers Mr. Yorkes is a murder like the rest of their parents— and yelling for the sake of being loud. So instead he says “I called you first. Twice.”

To this, Gert huffs a small laugh. Smiles, releases his head to tuck hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I, um. I know. I didn’t have my phone with me.” through the sentence her face pinches up, in a way he knows from those childhood days means she’s trying not to look upset. 

“Why not?” 

She looks at him again, fleeting, before going back to staring at their hands, twisting their fingers. “I was with her” she nods towards the dinosaur from the basement. 

“Why?” the question comes automatically, Chase is curious, and Gert answered before. He feels guilty for it as soon as she blinks hard, her face screwing up. 

She gasps a breath, “I didn’t want to be alone.” It seems that she wants to say more, tell him why she didn’t want to be alone, but she bites it back. Gert is not one to usually hold back, and Chase feels guilty again, for having made it seem like he didn’t care either now, or in the build up in years prior.

He leaves it though. He would ask where Molly was but it seems that maybe the source of Gert’s distress —she hasn’t mentioned her sister, nor brought her.—and he doesn’t want to make her even more upset. He just nods, rubs circles on the back of her hand. He hasn’t even really said anything about how he’s feeling, what his mother did, what his father _does,_ but being with Gert, reminiscing about their childhood rebellions, has made him relax, just a little. 

They sit there a moment, breathing synced, until a knock makes them both jump. Karolina sticks her head in and gives a strained smile. “I talked to my dad, but I think your mom is coming up soon.” She speaks to Chase, but nods at Gert, who is standing up with her hand still in his.

He nods slowly, standing with Gert’s tug on his arm, and takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Gert.” he does not specify for what. She nods, releases his hand as he walks out into his room, and calls for her dinosaur to come to her. She said it listens to her, protects her, and will protect _them,_ so he doesn’t jump when its- _her_ tail brushes his arm. Much.

Karolina says, “We’ll be in here, until you give the all clear, okay?” as she closes the door, not waiting for a response. 

Chase sits on his bed, staring at his door, wondering how their lives became so complicated that having two girls and a dinosaur hiding in his bathroom is somehow _not_ a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing this because obviously _what happened up there_ is a valid question. And then I got the idea that. Talkback was both a rebellion for Chase and an inside joke for them and my heart was like. Put that in. You gotta. Make it _mean something._  
>  I'm so happy to be in this fandom, and so happy that I've been able to write for it because it's _fun_ and to be able to finally feel motivated to write for pleasure so I'm feeling more confident in my writing too!! Thank you all for your comments on my other fics, and even if I don't reply, know I hold them close. Drop me a line at [my tumblr](https://findafight.tumblr.com) or comment/kudos here!! (validate meee)


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